Baseball on Steroids

Well, the Mitchell report comes out within the next half hour or so...and let me be the first to say: "Who cares?" Personally, I don't at this point. Knowing who did or who didn't take steroids in the past is not going to fix baseball's problems. The damage has been done...you can't go back and fix the records that have been broken. You can't take a World Series away from a team that was guilty. You can't quantify in anyway which teams and players gained an advantage and which teams or players were at a disadvantage.

The names that are going to come out, whoever they may be, were or are guilty of using a performance-enhancing substance. Can we determine whether they were habitual user gaining an unfair advantage on the field or whether they were just a user who used on occassion to recover from an injury? Does it matter? And whom does it matter to?

Personally, I thought George Mitchell would take his investigation a different way. I no longer care about those who used...naming users just satisfies a bloodlust that some have. I wanted George Mitchell to direct us to the enablers who allowed baseball to fall into such dispair. When did the Commissioner first understand there was an issue? Did the GM's, owners, coaches, etc. know what was happening in the locker room?

Secondly, I had hoped Mitchell would expose additional ways to clean up the game that the Commissioner's Office had overlooked? How can we reasonably test for HGH? How can we move on with a clean and fair game?

I obviously haven't seen the report but it appears Mitchell was more concerned about exposing the actual users than evaluating the system and helping actually fix the problem. Of course, what should we expect from a man who has ties deep in the baseball hierarchy and sits on the Red Sox Board of Directors? With all the conflicts Mitchell has, he should have recused himself from the investigation. Of course a truly independent investigation may turn up things baseball wouldn't approve of...and who would want that?